


I'll Come Back to You Someday

by LadyLeisure



Series: After the End [5]
Category: Brooklyn (2015), Brooklyn - Colm Toibin
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-29 01:05:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6352696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLeisure/pseuds/LadyLeisure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-movie/book. When her mother dies, Eilis finds herself back in Enniscorthy, where she runs into an old friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Come Back to You Someday

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired mainly by my deep crush on Domhnall Gleeson. :) The title is from First Aid Kit's lovely song "Ghost Town." This is based on both the movie and book worlds, although the book is more explicit about Jim and Eilis's relationship before she moves to Brooklyn; they knew each other, because of Nancy and George and also small town, but he was always cold to her. I've borrowed that backstory here. However, I've decided to ignore Eilis and Rose's brothers, who are in the book but aren't mentioned in the movie.

Eilis goes back to Enniscorthy by herself when her mother dies. Tony swears he can’t leave Maurizio alone with the business, and his mother offers to watch the children, Rose and Lacey, for the weeks she’ll be gone. Eilis doesn’t think to take them with her—without her mother, there’s nothing left for them in Ireland now. She wonders if it’ll be the last time she goes back and immediately feels guilty for even thinking it. 

She spends the sea voyage fretting over the state of her good black dress, much-mended, and her hair, which has been limp since Lacey’s birth the previous summer, no matter how many rollers Maurizio’s wife Antonella uses on it. There’s little of the Brooklyn glamour about her now, though at least there’ll be no swimming and dancing on this visit. Eilis thinks of Jim Farrell as she looks out to sea, willing Ireland to approach faster so she can get everything sorted and return to her life. The wind whips her hair much the same as it did seven years before when they were all laughing on the beach that day. Wasn’t she young and foolish back then, carrying on with him though her new husband waited for her back home. She wonders if she’ll ever feel up to telling Tony about it all. She knows he’d laugh it off, for her sake, but it’d kill him slowly just the same.

Enniscorthy is small and wet, same as always. “Oh, look at you!” Nancy fusses when Eilis arrives at her mother’s small house. Nancy and some of the other girls from town, Eilis’s old school mates, have been arranging everything, cleaning the house and going through the old clothes to set aside what’s to go to the church and what Eilis might want to keep. Father Flood and the new Enniscorthy parish priest were in communication all the previous week about it, to make the arrangements. Eilis missed the funeral—and it nearly killed her, the thought of missing her mother being laid to rest next to Rose—but here she is, now, to shut up the house and wait for it to be sold. 

After the initial flurry of greeting, and being told what’s been done so far, and showing pictures of the girls—“They’re quite dark, aren’t they?” Katie Conlon says, and Nancy tells her to hush—Eilis and Nancy find themselves sitting alone on the stairs, just as though they were still seventeen years old. 

“Is America still grand?” Nancy asks. Her little son, Johnnie, is babbling quietly to himself and his teddy on the kitchen floor. Eilis sent the bear, a Fortini’s purchase. She doesn’t visit there much any more, but she and Miss Fortini exchange cards at Christmas. 

“Oh, it’s just home now,” Eilis says, twisting her wedding ring on her finger. “Between the girls and keeping the books for Tony and his brothers, it’s not so different from life here, I’ll bet.”

Nancy shakes her head. “I don’t know about that,” she teases. “At least you can go down the pub and not see the same dull faces you’ve known since birth.” 

“Didn’t know you’d been going to the pub since birth,” Eilis says, laughing. Every time she comes back to Enniscorthy it takes longer and longer to slide back into her old self, but there she is, an echo of aimless days spent wandering town and teasing each other and gossiping about the boys they knew. “How’re things here, Nance? George all right?”

Nancy is just the same, silly and serious in equal measure. But Eilis can read the loss of the little girl who came before Johnnie in the crinkles at the corners of her eyes, in the laugh that comes just a little slower than it used to, as Nancy tells a story about George and the old rugby club boys getting rip-roaring drunk in the broad daylight after Eilis’s mother’s funeral. Eilis feels her eyes fill at the thought of all of them sending her mother off for her when she couldn’t be here to do it. She remembers Jim saying that her sister’s death was the saddest thing to happen in the town. She can’t account for the wave of tenderness that washes over her, except that the littlest things have been making her cry ever since Lacey was born. 

George wrote to Eilis when their little one died, and she’d never had a letter from him before. It scared her to death, too, to read his name on the envelope. She didn’t think he’d ever forgive her for what she did to Jim, but he told her Nancy had been asking after her, and so she came home all the same, as soon as she could manage. That was two years ago now. Time’s going so fast, all of a sudden. 

“What do you think, shall we go down the pub now? You must be hungry and I haven’t thought about what to do for supper,” Nancy says, standing and brushing off her skirt. Eilis notes idly that skirts in Enniscorthy are still big and full, not like the straighter ones she’s seen whenever she’s been in the city to visit Father Flood or Mrs. Keogh. 

“The pub?” she says. “Jim Farrell’s pub?” She hasn’t seen Jim any of the times she’s been back. He’s always been away—visiting his parents up the coast where they retired, apparently, but most likely warned away by Nancy and George. It’s been seven years, but she still doesn’t like to walk into his territory just like that. It wouldn’t be right. 

“Of course, Jim Farrell’s pub,” says Nancy. “He won’t be there. He and George went for a round of golf earlier, and he left the pub to his cousin for the afternoon.” Nancy looks away from the mirror by the door, where she’s been patting her dark curls into place. “Eilis, I won’t pretend that there was nothing between the two of you, and I know Jim’s never married yet, but you don’t need to worry about him.”

“I’m sure he has his pick of girls in this town.” Eilis stands and pats her own hair, just for something to do. 

“That he does,” Nancy agrees, her dark eyes smiling. “He’s quite the romantic figure around here, you know. Jilted twice!” 

Laughing, they walk out the door. 

**

The trouble is that Jim Farrell is in his pub after all, leaning behind the bar talking to George when Nancy and Eilis walk in. George looks up from his pint with the unruffled expression of a practised smooth talker. It’s a face Eilis remembers from a dozen dances and just like that she’s remembering the taste of watery lemonade and the chill of the parish hall. Nancy squeezes her hand and heads right for the men. Eilis follows, wishing she had stopped to put on a newer dress, something more Brooklyn than her old patterned skirt and white blouse. At least her blue cardigan, the same shade as her eyes, says Tony, is new and clean. 

Jim is looking at her in an old way, the way she remembers from before she left for Brooklyn, whenever they were left behind if Nancy and George went off to dance. It’s an appraising look, a little cool. Eilis squares her shoulders on her approach. She’s a married mother, for goodness sakes. She can handle an old friend. 

“Hello, Eilis,” Jim says. His voice gives her a start—it’s low and friendly. Only his hands, twisting a white towel between them, give him away. He’s nervous, and thank goodness, because Eilis is, too. 

She leans against the bar next to Nancy, who’s taken a seat beside George and is chattering on about how the morning went. “Hello, Jim,” she manages. She just has to forget that it’s more than likely that everyone in this pub, and therefore the town, is looking right at the two of them. If Miss Kelly were still alive, she’d likely be peering in at the window, beside herself. “How are you? Did you have a good round?”

“We did, thanks,” Jim says, looking down and wiping away a spot only he can see on the bar’s gleaming surface. “Came back here for a quick pint and got to talking. What can I get you ladies?”

Nancy twists around and motions for Eilis to sit down. “Eilis could use some food. She just got in today and she looks peaky.”

“I’m sure you’ve been talking her ear off all day,” George says over her shoulder, draping an arm across her back. “Give us a kiss.”

Nancy squeals and rears back. “You’re all sweaty!”

Eilis and Jim lock eyes. “Just a quick pint, you said?” she asks, feeling a wild laugh threaten. Jim’s mouth twists in amusement. “You’d never know they’re married and respectable people,” he says. 

“Don’t think we are that,” George says loudly. “Nance?”

Nancy is laughing, her lipstick smudged and her face red. “You fool,” she says, pushing at his chest. 

Jim goes off to order them all some food and says he’ll sit with them at the window table, as his cousin’s still there to pull pints. It’s slow, for a Saturday afternoon, and the four of them stay at the table through suppertime and into the early evening, laughing and drinking. Eilis is flushed and full and happy, sitting there watching Nancy and George put on their little show of being an old married couple. No one mentions Tony, and she manages to avoid talking about the girls, too. Jim’s across the table from her, and she can’t stop looking at him. She forgot the way he can look apologetic and amused all at the same time. He keeps darting his eyes over to Nancy and George and making that face. She remembers dancing with him at their wedding, her face tucked against his neck and his long body pressed against hers, so different from Tony’s compact frame. It’s her body remembering the feel of him, not her mind—she can feel it in the way she leans her head toward him just as he swallows. Her fingers trace the grain in the old wooden table, and out of the corner of her eye she sees his hand come to rest close by, mimicking her movements without touching. 

All at once she knows it’s time to go. “I’ll be off, I think,” she says, standing up a touch unsteadily and digging around in her purse. Jim stands as well and puts a hand on her arm, just briefly. “It’s on the house,” he says quietly. “The old friend special.”

“Should we walk you home, Eilis?” asks Nancy, just as the door opens and a group of seven or eight people around their age spill in. Eilis spots Katie Conlon and Brid Martin and a few others she recognizes from the golf club or the rugby. George waves and a few of the men come over. 

Eilis shakes her head at Nancy over the crowd. “I’ll be all right on my own,” she says. “I’ll see you tomorrow at Mass. Will you come back for tea after and we can sort the clothes?”

“All right,” Nancy calls. She looks behind Eilis—Jim must be standing there, because Eilis can feel the barest warmth at her back—and raises one eyebrow, a trick Eilis has always admired, and then nods once, as if in approval, and turns back to George and the rest. 

Eilis allows Jim to tuck her hand into his elbow and lead her from the pub as though she’d planned to all along. 

**

Outside it’s cool and calm after the cozy noise of the pub. No one is about to see them, but Jim lets Eilis’s hand drop and sticks his in his pockets. “I’ll walk you back,” he says. Eilis doesn’t feel like arguing. This is the kind of night she never had, back when she lived here—a brisk spring evening and a handsome man to walk her home. Not for the first time, she wonders what would have happened if Jim Farrell had ever spoken to her back then.

They’re halfway along to the church before he speaks now. “So, you’ve children and all that, I suppose?” She looks up but can’t make out more than his profile in the dusk. “It’s strange to ask, but I’d like to know.”

“I do,” she says. “Two girls, Rose and Lacey. People thought Lacey was a strange name, but being Irish, you get away with a lot. Tony said everyone would think I was still homesick. But he liked the name, in the end.” She’s talking too much, just like she drank too much and stayed too late. 

“And Rose after your sister, of course,” says Jim. “I’m sure your mother was pleased. I was very sorry about that. She was a nice lady.”

“Thank you,” Eilis says, and she doesn’t know if it’s the drink, or the smell of being back home and the sight of the old church and everything, or missing Tony and the girls, but she’s crying something fierce. 

“Oh, Eilis,” says Jim, putting an arm around her and steering her into the shadow of the church. “Shh, pet.” She leans into his chest and cries for a while, nuzzling in a little more when he puts his other arm around her and rubs her back. It’s nice, to be held like this, with the weight of the past gathered around them. He smells clean and warm and familiar. 

“Sorry,” she gasps, finally, pulling back but staying within the loose circle of his arms. 

Jim swallows hard as he looks down at her. “Eilis,” he says, a little rough. He dips his head down and brushes her lips with his, just the barest, briefest touch, hardly even a kiss. He waits. Eilis pushes herself up on her toes, presses her lips against his, feels the muscles in his arms tense. They stay like that, locked together, going no further, for only a moment before Jim pushes on her shoulders, gently, breaking the kiss. 

“You’re married,” he says, not unkindly. “Still.” 

“I am. I love Tony. I know I come back here and it seems like maybe I don’t. But I do. He’s just… It’s being here, and my mother gone and everything. Seeing you again.” She looks up at him, his skin pale in the moonlight, his lips pressed together. “Don’t you ever wonder?”

“Of course I do,” Jim says. “I don’t know why I wasn’t nicer to you before. Back when Nancy and George were courting. Before you left the first time.”

Eilis breathes out, relieved and a little shocked. They’ve had the same thought, then, for all these years. She feels a little sad for the girl she was—frustrated and bored and convinced that no one would ever want her except on the other side of the ocean. He runs a hand through his hair and takes her arm again. They begin walking toward the house, going faster by some wordless agreement. 

“That letter you left me,” he says, when they’re about a block away. She can see the house, dark and silent, and another wave of grief hits her. She wishes—oh, all kinds of things: that her mother was still alive; that Tony had come with her; that she was sixteen again and Rose was waiting up for her and Jim Farrell really was walking her home in the dark and she could make any choice she wanted.

“I don’t remember writing it,” she admits. “I was in a bit of a daze. Just wanting to get back.”

“It wasn’t unkind,” he says. “If anything, it gave me hope. Hope that I’d see you again and we’d…” He gestures between their bodies, awkwardly, and she laughs a little. “Not that!” He blushes. “That we’d be together again, in some way. Even just this, walking you home.”

They’re at the door now and she digs in her purse for her key, which she’ll soon have to give up, which she’s kept all this time. She turns away from him to open the door, and he presses up behind her, his lips at the base of her neck, his hands on her waist. She gets the door open and then she gets inside and turns back to him, standing on the stoop, looking so young with his hair mussed up and that look on his face. Apologetic and amused and a little afraid. 

“I’m going back,” she says. She has to say it all first, this time, like she didn’t do before. “I love Tony and the girls and that’s my life. That’s what I chose, before. All right?”

Jim nods, once, and she backs away from the door, holding it open for him as he walks inside. 

What she understands now, that she didn’t before, is that she’ll have to keep making that same choice, over and over again. And she will, in the end. She’ll go home.


End file.
